Simon Says Die

by LENA DIAZ,

  “Black,” Matt said.

  “Me too. What do you mean your stalker problem? In addition to the vandalism, someone’s after you?”

  She handed each of them a cup of coffee and leaned back against the sink. “Someone left a threatening note. It’s not the first one. Pierce thinks I should leave town.”

  “Maybe you should,” Matt offered. “At least until they catch whoever is doing this.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  “Good question.” Pierce’s deep voice sounded from the doorway. “I think it’s time to cancel your renovations and leave until everything settles down.” From the angry look on his face and his sharp tone, Madison figured his latest encounter with Hamilton hadn’t gone well.

  She frowned. “If I run away, it’s not going to fix anything.”

  “When’s the last time you ever stayed in one place more than a few months? You were living out of motels, traveling all over the country when I met you. And from what Logan told me, that was the norm.”

  The anger in his tone had her clenching her fists. “Well, it’s not the norm now. I’m tired of not having a real home, not having any roots. Maybe I’ve finally found the place where I belong.”

  He cocked a brow. “Belong? Here? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no Ritz-Carlton around here, no Metropolitan Opera house.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? Where’s the excitement for someone like you in a small, lazy town on the river?”

  Was that what he thought of her? That she was a big city snob and couldn’t be happy in a small town? Or was it more personal? Maybe he just didn’t want her in his town. Well, tough. She wasn’t letting him, or anyone else, force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m. Not. Leaving.”

  His brows drew down in a deep slash. “When you should stay, you don’t. When you should leave, like now, you dig in and fight tooth and nail. Why do you always have to make everything harder than it has to be?”

  Braedon glanced back and forth between them. “Um, guys, shouldn’t we be discussing the stalker?”

  Pierce scrubbed his hands over his face, as if he were trying to calm down. “You need to leave town, Madison. Let me handle the investigation. When it’s all clear, you can come back then.”

  “No. I want to face . . . this person, whoever he is, and end it—now, rather than spend the rest of my life wondering and worrying.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Hamilton stepped up behind Pierce. “Not until I get the forensics on that note and your computer. I want you to stay in town.”

  Pierce frowned at him, but before he could say anything, the doorbell rang again.

  “Who the hell is it now?” He shoved past Hamilton back into the family room. A few seconds later, he came back, his expression grim. “The B-and-B team found more vandalism in the backyard.”

  The house quickly emptied, with everyone heading around to the back of the house. Madison would have gone with them, but Pierce’s harshly whispered command to stay inside had her sitting in the front room. And even if she did want to disobey his Neanderthal order, Hamilton had posted Officer Williams on the porch to make sure she couldn’t leave the house.

  Chapter Fifteen

  PIERCE STEPPED OVER the ruined valves that controlled the sprinkler system, and stood on one of the few portions of dry lawn in Madison’s backyard.

  Braedon shook his head, his hands on his hips, as he surveyed the muddy mess. “Someone deliberately cut every wire and broke the valves, causing the sprinklers back here to go nuts and flood the yard. Why would anyone do that?”

  “My guess is whoever did this doesn’t want you digging,” Pierce said. “The question is, are they trying to stop you from digging—specifically—or just from being here at all.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Matt said. “We weren’t even supposed to be here until next week. No one could have known we’d be here today to dig the footers.”

  “Good point.” Pierce glanced around. “This is recent, within the last few minutes. The water has just started to pool around the side. If you hadn’t shut it off, the water would be running into the street by now. Whoever did this wasn’t trying to hide their work.”

  “The ground is soaked,” Braedon said. “We definitely can’t do any digging today. We’ve turned the water off to the house. We’ll have to put a shut-off valve on the main sprinkler line like it should have been done in the first place before we can turn the water back on.” He shook his head. “Sloppy work not to have a proper shut-off valve. Just sloppy.”

  Pierce glanced over at Hamilton. “You’re not going to try to blame this on her too, are you?”

  He shook his head, looking just as perplexed as Pierce felt. “No, I don’t see how she could have done this. She didn’t have the opportunity.”

  “I’ll have to go to a supply store to get what we need to fix this.” Matt motioned to the rest of the B&B workers. “You all might as well go back to the office, see what other projects you can work on. Braedon and I can handle this mess.”

  “What are you going to do, Lieutenant?” Pierce asked.

  “We’ll do what we always do—investigate. I’m not assuming anything. We’ll go around the neighborhood, see if the neighbors saw or heard anything. Does that satisfy you?”

  Pierce nodded. “That’s what I would do.”

  As Hamilton got on his cell phone, Pierce headed around the side of the house to the front. He nodded to Officer Williams who was standing outside the front door, and headed inside. He was surprised when Madison didn’t meet him right away with a barrage of questions about the vandalism. Maybe she was in the kitchen.

  He slid the pocket door open between the family room and kitchen, but the kitchen was empty. He checked out the mother-in-law suite, the mudroom, and made a complete circuit of the downstairs.

  “Madison, where are you?” he called out, but no one answered. The first stirrings of unease flashed through him.

  “Madison,” he said, louder this time, as he hurried through the rest of the rooms on the ground floor.

  The front door opened just as he was starting up the stairs. He turned around, disappointed to see that it was only Officer Williams.

  “Where’s Mrs. McKinley?” Pierce asked.

  Williams’s face showed his surprise. “She should be inside, sir. No one has gone past me except you.”

  “Search the basement while I look upstairs. The entrance is in the closet in the back hall.” He pointed toward the hallway, then jogged up the stairs to the second floor.

  A minute later, full-blown panic had him running back down the stairs. Williams was waiting, along with Hamilton.

  “No sign of her in the basement,” Williams said, before Pierce could ask.

  “What’s going on?” Hamilton asked.

  “She’s gone.” Pierce headed toward the front door.

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean she’s gone?”

  Pierce yanked the door open and paused. “Missing, vanished, gone.”

  He slammed the door on Hamilton’s next question, then jogged down the front steps. He walked around the house’s foundation, looking for footprints, something to explain how Madison had left the house without anyone seeing her. On the right side of the house, away from the driveway where all the trucks were parked, he stopped at the entrance to the basement.

  He punched the speed dial for Casey as he bent down to study the ground outside the basement steps. The grass, even though it had turned brown in the cold weather, was still too thick to show any useful impressions. But it was bent back, showing someone had recently passed this way. Or, possibly, one person carrying another?

  “Pierce,” Casey’s voice sounded through the phone, obviously recognizing his cell number. “What’s up?”

  “Madison McKinley is missing.” He straightened. “It looks like someone lef
t the house through the basement, but I can’t pick up any distinct footprints.”

  He tightened his hand around the phone and followed the faint impressions in the grass out to the street where they abruptly ended. “The trail ends at the street. No tire tracks.”

  “What are you thinking? She left, without telling you?”

  “No, she wouldn’t do that.” His heart slammed in his chest. “He’s got her, Casey. Damn it. I shouldn’t have left her in the house alone. The alarm was off because the cops were here, going in and out. I shouldn’t have left her. Her stalker, Damon, whoever . . . he’s got her.”

  “I’ll help in any way that I can. Hamilton won’t be pleased about my involvement since I’m focusing on the ‘Simon says’ murders. I’ll send Tessa over, unofficially—as your friend. That should placate Hamilton. But I’ll do what I can behind the scenes. Give me the address.”

  Pierce rattled off Madison’s Gaston Street address. “She was taken within the last half hour.”

  “Get me a vehicle description.”

  “Working on it.” He hung up and headed around to the other side of the house. He expected to see Madison’s little red convertible parked in the driveway on the other side of Braedon’s massive B&B work truck.

  The car wasn’t there.

  He frowned down at the tire tracks. Again the grass was too thick here to offer any viable footprints to tell him who had moved the car. It could have been anyone.

  Even Madison.

  What the hell? Had she been abducted or had she snuck out and left on her own? Why would she do that?

  He turned back toward the house and stood in indecision. Hamilton was waiting for him on the front porch. The two officers he had brought with him were heading down the sidewalk in opposite directions, canvassing the neighborhood.

  Just like they should.

  Hamilton was following procedures.

  Just like he should.

  Was Pierce the one who wasn’t keeping an open mind? Was he allowing his past with Madison to cloud his judgment? Was the flooded backyard a diversion? To get everyone in the backyard? His brothers may have turned off the water earlier than the perpetrator would have expected, but eventually the water would have run to the front street. Someone would have noticed, and knocked on the front door to get whoever was inside the house to go around back.

  Wait, that didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t have been a diversion. Madison wasn’t staying in the house. No one could have known she’d be there this morning. If Pierce hadn’t brought her to get her laptop, she’d never have been here in the first place.

  Unless she’d called someone, to tell him she was there, to tell them to help her get out of the house, away from Hamilton.

  She could have called from the kitchen. She’d been in there with the door closed.

  Again, that didn’t make sense. Madison would have been outside if Pierce had let her.

  Or would she? Maybe she assumed he would stop her?

  He shook his head, but even as he told himself that thought was crazy, he couldn’t help but think that it made a bizarre kind of sense. Madison had been hiding something from him, all along. He’d known that, and had hoped she’d eventually trust him enough to confide in him.

  Was it possible that whatever she’d been hiding from him all this time was something that could put her in jail? That would certainly explain why she didn’t want Logan involved. She didn’t want her police chief brother to have to choose between his career and helping his sister.

  Especially if she were guilty.

  Of what? What could she have done?

  He raked his hand through his hair. Had she been abducted? By her alleged stalker? Or was she on the run, afraid of what Hamilton might find on her computer? The note had said: I’M COMING FOR YOU. That could be a threat, sure.

  Or it could be a promise . . . from someone she knew, someone who was helping her get away, perhaps a lover.

  He closed his eyes, surprised at the pain that flashed through him at that thought.

  “Buchanan? You coming?”

  He opened his eyes. Hamilton was staring at him, waiting. Pierce headed back across the yard and up the steps, sparing Hamilton only a quick glance before opening the front door. There on the wall to the left of the entrance was the hook where Madison always hung her car keys.

  Her keys weren’t there.

  The only way to get the keys was to go into the house. The only way in the house was past the police officer who’d been stationed out front.

  Or through the basement.

  The question was whether someone entered the basement and took Madison, or whether she’d left the house, of her own free will.

  “I assume you called your boss. Did you find anything out?” Hamilton asked.

  Pierce studied the other man. No censure, no anger that Casey might be giving him advice, or even helping. Hamilton looked genuinely curious, concerned—an officer helping a fellow officer. Had Pierce only imagined Hamilton was biased against Madison this whole time?

  Hamilton was patiently waiting for an answer.

  “Casey’s still working the ‘Simon says’ case, but another agent—Tessa James—is coming over, unofficially.” His hands tightened into fists. “I found a path through the grass leading out of the basement to the street. I couldn’t tell if it was one person, or two. Madison’s car is missing, along with her keys.”

  Hamilton seemed to digest that for a moment. “What do you think happened?”

  “I wish to God I knew.”

  MADISON STRUGGLED AGAINST the cloth that bound her wrists, but her awkward position, with her hands behind her back and her knees drawn up and her ankles tied together didn’t give her any leverage.

  She was in a car trunk. She knew that even without any light. The fluorescent emergency trunk release glowed in the dark, tantalizingly close but out of reach.

  She remembered going into the kitchen for more coffee. Someone had grabbed her from behind. He’d put a sweet-smelling cloth over her nose and mouth. After that, everything went black. He must have somehow taken her out of her house, and put her in this car.

  But who? Damon? Or someone else?

  From the aches and pains in her back and hips, she knew she’d been in the trunk for quite some time. She shivered, the cold seeming to seep into her bones without the benefit of a coat. But she was thankful it was cold outside. If she’d been left in a car trunk in the heat of summer, she would have baked to death.

  She strained against her bonds again, twisting and pulling, trying to get her hands up under her bottom and over her legs to get her hands in front of her. If she could do that, she could pull the trunk release and try to get away before her captor came back.

  Several minutes later, she collapsed back against the carpeted trunk bottom, gasping in deep breaths of chilly air. No luck. She was still trussed up just as soundly as she’d been when she woke up.

  How long could she survive in this trunk? If she didn’t die of hypothermia, she’d run out of air soon, wouldn’t she? Or were trunks not airtight these days? How many more minutes, or hours, of good air, did she have left?

  God, please don’t let me die. Not like this.

  If someone were near the car, would they hear her in the trunk? What if the man who’d taken her was standing outside? She couldn’t lie here and just do nothing. She had to take the chance that someone might hear her, and would help her.

  She drew a deep breath and screamed.

  TWO HOURS.

  Madison had been gone for more than two hours, and Pierce still had no leads about what had happened to her.

  He and Matt were the only ones in Madison’s home office right now. The police had executed their search warrant, and Hamilton and the others were in the family room discussing next steps.

  Matt had surprised Pierce by wanting to help. He’d organized the B&B crew and his brothers, and they were out driving the roads. But in spite of all that manpower, and the BOLO the police
had issued to be on the lookout for Madison’s bright red convertible, no one had spotted her car.

  “It’s a lot of area to cover.” Matt traced his fingers across the map spread out on Madison’s desk.

  “I appreciate your help.”

  “That’s what family’s for.”

  Pierce gripped Matt’s shoulder and gave him a nod of thanks. He was only just now beginning to realize how much he’d distanced himself from his family over the years as he worked on the serial-killer task forces he used to be on. But his brothers had forgiven him and were doing everything they could to help, pulling together like families were supposed to.

  A commotion at the front door had Pierce and Matt looking up. A moment later, Tessa stepped into the room. From the look on her face, Pierce knew he wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

  “Thanks for coming. This is Matt, one of my brothers.”

  She shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.” She glanced over at the detectives and police officers in the next room. “We need to talk, in private.”

  “There’s a mother-in-law suite off the kitchen. We can go there.” Pierce led the way through the family room, avoiding Hamilton’s curious glance when he, Matt, and Tessa stepped through the archway into the kitchen.

  “Is he coming with us?” Tessa looked pointedly at Matt.

  “He can hear you just fine, and yes, he is coming too.” Matt stared at her, as if daring her to try to stop him.

  Pierce opened the door to the sitting room that was part of the mother-in-law suite, and ushered the others inside before closing the door behind them. “Matt’s helping with the search, and he’s smarter than you and me combined. He wants to help.”

  Tessa shrugged and turned her back on Matt to face Pierce.

  Matt, having none of that, sidled around to join the three of them.

  She ignored him. “I’ve got a confirmed sighting of Madison’s car at a motel outside of town, just off the interstate.”

  Relief poured through him. “Let’s go.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Wait, you need to hear all of this.”

  His stomach clenched. He was already dreading what she was going to say. “Go ahead.”